Friends at Homeland Security by Carl Douglass Read Free Book Online

compromised, McGee. This involves more than just me; and our customers, clients, and the board of directors will never permit it, even for the purpose of getting to the bottom of our son’s murder. I presume that the NYPD detectives are as discreet as you are, but there will have to be some careful negotiation on this subject,” he says with finality.
    It seems telling to me that he does not look me in the eyes when he says it.
    “Sure. Thanks for the cooperation. We will work around the privacy issues.”
    “We have never had a personal security force take care of us, McGee,” Anne Marcus says. “Can you arrange that?”
    “We have an excellent man in charge of personal security. His name is Ivory White, and he will arrange all of the details. He is persnickety about his responsibilities; so, please do what he asks you to do. It will all be in your best interest.”
    On the way back to the office in the limo, Caitlin asks me, “Hey, McGee, did you see Howard’s reaction when you told him he would have to have his business, e-mail, and telephone, etcetera, carefully evaluated and monitored?”
    “Sure did. I was not really sure but that he might faint.”
    “Something to tuck into the back of our minds, I think,” she says. “Now what?”
    I say let’s have a talk with Mary Margaret and Martin over at One Police Plaza. Our forensics accountancy is pretty good, but we need better. I think we are going to get further on this puzzle by following the money trail than any other way.
    “Let me do that,” I say, “and you do whatever is necessary to nail down the whereabouts of our alleged murderer, Viachaslau Mazurkiewicz. He is going to link the money to the string puller; and together, they are going to make our case for us.”
    “I’m all right with doing that, but I tell you this: something is rotten in Gramercy Park, or at least the Marcuses are more connected to the death of their son than they are telling,” Caitlin responds.
    “My hunch agrees with yours; but we don’t have any evidence; and we can’t get anything useful by squeezing them. Let’s see where the forensics take us.”
    Caitlin gets hold of Mary Margaret who was willing to see us on short notice. Ed gets us to the lower Manhattan location of One Police Plaza in record time. Her office is on the seventh floor; and Caitlin—ever the fitness FemaNazi—makes us walk up the stairs. Martin Redworth is already sitting in front of Mary Margaret’s desk when we get there.
    “Come in and shovel the papers off a chair; so, you can take a seat,” Mary Margaret says with a winning smile. “What can I do for the world-famous private eyes today?”
    I take the lead, “Mary Margaret, Martin, we have a fairly good early working idea of what might be going on in the murder case of Decklin Marcus. We are pretty sure that there is more to the Marcuses than meets the eye. We asked Decklin’s father, Howard, to let us see the bank records where he is involved, but he quickly turned coy. We need the big bad cops to order a full forensic accountancy. The answers are going to come from there. I am all but certain of that.”
    “What about you, Caitlin?” Martin asks.
    “I couldn’t agree more. We can’t know too much about the Marcuses.”
    “What about that Russian mobster guy? How does he fit into the big picture?” queries Mary Margaret.
    “Besides being the probable killer, we don’t know enough about him—or about the Marcuses, for that matter—to be able to answer your question. Our office is going to follow that thread with all we have,” I tell her. “And we would really appreciate it if the homicide unit would go after the Marcus parents. We have to be able to work with them—Howard Marcus brought the case to us, after all. That said, we won’t get in your way; it is your case, but I think a division of labor will get us where we want to be. I am sure we need to get at the bank numbers before they ‘accidentally’ get lost as